Chords and melody together

[Chrisss]

Hello!

I was wondering if anyone has some tips on how to learn to play chords and melody together?

I've been stuck in only playing fixed strumming patterns and finger-picking patterns that I've been supporting myself with while I've been singing mantras.

I also know a little collection of simple melodic pieces that I enjoy playing, licks, simple classical solos, etc.

But I have never really figured out of to combine chords with melodies. For some of my friends it seems like they do this really effortlessly, but to me it seems like a great mystery.

Any help on this would be deeply appreciated :-D

[Skeezix]

Lots of possible approaches — here’s one:

Think of any simple short melody (Twinkle twinkle, Amazing Grace, Shady Grove, Iron Man…)
Play it in chords instead of individual notes,
Try using an individual note or a few individual notes instead of one or more chords where needed or just to add extra color,
Then repeat this process with gradually longer or more complex tunes to suit your skills.

Have fun!

[Silly Moustache]

Originally Posted by Chrisss

Hello!

I was wondering if anyone has some tips on how to learn to play chords and melody together?

I've been stuck in only playing fixed strumming patterns and finger-picking patterns that I've been supporting myself with while I've been singing mantras.

I also know a little collection of simple melodic pieces that I enjoy playing, licks, simple classical solos, etc.

But I have never really figured out of to combine chords with melodies. For some of my friends it seems like they do this really effortlessly, but to me it seems like a great mystery.

Any help on this would be deeply appreciated :-D

Hi Chris, this is what most of my clients come to me for.

Please see info below, Regards, Andy

[Andyrondack]

What your asking is how to arrange music for solo guitar, not the sort of thing you can learn from an internet forum, you may as well ask "how do I play guitar?"
There are various techniques used, jazz players call it chord melody, celtic type guitarists call it fingerstyle, bluegrassers do it with a pick and call it cross picking, finger pickers use Travis picking so ask your friends what technique they are using .
There are numerous books videos and internet lessons on how to harmonise a melody using these techniques.

[JKA]

Chord melody is very satisfying to play and well worth the time and effort.

I learned from the great Fred Sokolow. Check him out on you tube. There's a nice easy lesson which shows you how to play the melody within the chords for Red River Valley, a tune I'm sure all our American cousins grew up with.

I've learned some really cool jazz tunes too (chord/melody/solos) from Mr. Sokolow. Be patient, take your time and play slowly.

It won't be long before you're bashing out tunes from the great American songbook. So far I have Take Five, The Shadow of Your Smile, Long Ago and Far Away, Honeysuckle Rose, Moonglow, Moonlight in Vermont, Bluesette, Fly Me to the Moon, Makin' Whoopie, and a few others under my belt.

Enjoy the journey, it's well worth the effort

[Mandobart]

Most of my playing is in the bluegrass/newgrass/Americana genres. Whether playing fingerstyle or flatpicking, I find that all the notes I need are literally right there at my fingertips in the chord shapes I'm using.

Except for barre chords, I always have some spare left hand fingers not needed for the chord I'm playing. I put those to work playing the melody line. Start by playing the arpeggios associated with each chord in the song's progression. Often the melody is simply based on those notes.

[The Bard Rocks]

If you are not playing jazz, but using simple chords, it really pays to know both the notes that comprise the chord and the notes that you are singing along with your accompaniment. Notice how often they are the same notes. So, while chording, you can play some of the melody with moving individual fingers.

After this, you can move just one finger on the chord and get another note that occurs in the melody. An example might be moving just your index finger in a C chord shape to hold down an A, briefly, only when needed to continue the melody.

Adding to this, once a rhythm is established, you can leave it for short periods to play single notes of the melody, and the listener's mind will fill in the temporarily missing rhythm. (With backing instruments helping, you can leave the rhythm for longer periods.)

Lastly, if you are used to doing bass runs, it is not a far step to add transition notes, singly. I am not a naturally-good singer, and find this helps to keep me on key.

[Brent Hutto]

Like a couple other replies have said, the term I prefer to use for what you're talking about is harmonizing the tunes you play on guitar. A very advanced and demanding (IMO) version of that is full-on "chord melody" playing but it can be as simple as playing the melody and adding one extra harmony note under the melody when it simple to do so using a chord shape you're already forming to play the melody.

I'm in Month 19 of what may well be a very long process, taking lesson to learn how to harmonize tunes I'm playing. I won't ever be able to bang out chord melody versions of a bunch of Great America Songbook standards but I have worked out a few slow, contemplative arrangements that have a fair bit of chord tone accompaniment to the basic melody.

In my opinion, it will take a certain amount of music "theory" (that's a loaded term I know) to go along with your fretboard knowledge. Maybe not 100% necessary to have a cognitive understanding of functional harmony but there are some basic patterns and ideas that you'll need to understand whether you know the music-geek name for them or not.

For a trivial example, everyone recognizes the sound of a plagal cadence when they hear it but those with a bit of music theory call it by that name. Whether you know it the name or not, as you work out harmony for your tunes I guarantee you at various times you'll figure out that working in the IV chord in the final phrase of a tune gives a most pleasing ending when you stick the I chord under the last note. There are dozens of patterns and combinations that work like that, you'll like the way they sound at certain points in an arrangement so you'll eventually get used to "finding" them with your fingers when its time to use them.

[BluesKing777]

Originally Posted by Chrisss

Hello!

I was wondering if anyone has some tips on how to learn to play chords and melody together?

I've been stuck in only playing fixed strumming patterns and finger-picking patterns that I've been supporting myself with while I've been singing mantras.

I also know a little collection of simple melodic pieces that I enjoy playing, licks, simple classical solos, etc.

But I have never really figured out of to combine chords with melodies. For some of my friends it seems like they do this really effortlessly, but to me it seems like a great mystery.

Any help on this would be deeply appreciated :-D

A good simple way to get started......

Play the low E string......once!

Then play lots of notes on the high E string!

Then play Low E on beat 1, 2, 3, 4. Keep it going like a bass player....keep practicing, this is Constant Bass.

Once you have the hang, add the high E notes you were playing AS WELL.

You have begun!

Next, play an E chord and repeat all the steps above. When you play bits of that E chord while playing high notes, well......that is very basic chord melody....you are playing a chord at the same time as a melody.


Good luck!


BluesKing777.

[Brent Hutto]

Somewhere on YouTube (I think) there's an ancient video of Bill Frisell illustrating an ultra simple approach to harmonizing using open strings.

It's been years so I don't recall the details but he basically played a simple tune on one string, just sliding his hand back and forth all the way from the nut to the 12th fret or so. I think it might have been on the B string.

Then at various points he also adds an open D, G or high E string whenever those notes work as harmony for a particular note in the melody. I think that captures the essence of the idea of adding suggestions of harmonic to a simple melody.

[Brent Hutto]

Since this topic has been (rightly) moved to PLAY and Write, here's a couple examples of arrangements I've come up with in my slow, laborious trial-and-error method. By the way, I worked these out by ear and then transcribed them in my Finale software so I'd be able to remember what I'd come up with.

For each of these tunes I started by learning the melody, which was easy. Then to add the harmony notes I basically played each phrase over and over experimenting with what other notes I could easily reach with my hand whatever shape it needed to be for playing the melody notes.

If I could find one harmony note that worked, it usually was a chord tone from some chord I could identify as being part of the changes of the song. So that helped me add a second or third note from that same chord.

Embarrassing to admit but each of these simple arrangements took me a couple weeks of steadily working on it every day, usually for a couple hours. My long term goal is to be able to come up with harmony stuff similar to this on the fly as I'm playing a tune, rather than having to work it out one note or one phrase at a time.

ATTACHED JPEGS
I like to play Lay Down Your Weary Tune in D Harmonic Minor so I did an arrangement of that.

The other is the first section of a tune we heard on a TV show, it's called Perdiamochi.

[mawmow]

Originally Posted by JKA

Chord melody is very satisfying to play and well worth the time and effort.

I learned from the great Fred Sokolow. Check him out on you tube. There's a nice easy lesson which shows you how to play the melody within the chords for Red River Valley, a tune I'm sure all our American cousins grew up with.

I've learned some really cool jazz tunes too (chord/melody/solos) from Mr. Sokolow. Be patient, take your time and play slowly.

It won't be long before you're bashing out tunes from the great American songbook. So far I have Take Five, The Shadow of Your Smile, Long Ago and Far Away, Honeysuckle Rose, Moonglow, Moonlight in Vermont, Bluesette, Fly Me to the Moon, Makin' Whoopie, and a few others under my belt.

Enjoy the journey, it's well worth the effort

+1 on this.
Fred Sokolow made a bunch of instructional videos for Homespun directed by Happy Traum. Traum himself did show how to get the melody out of chords : You
only have to work with the notes in the chord to find play the melody.

[Mr. Jelly]

I suggest that you YouTube Carter picking and old-time guitar picking to get you started. It is really easy actually once you understand how it works. Once you understand that you can extrapolate it all over the neck.

[JackC1]

Originally Posted by Chrisss

But I have never really figured out of to combine chords with melodies. For some of my friends it seems like they do this really effortlessly, but to me it seems like a great mystery.

Do you want to compose your own chord melodies of existing songs or just play existing chord-melody pieces?

If the former, take a lead sheet and play the chords at various places; voice the chords to put the melody note on top. This is a starting point; and later you'll find that the melody notes don't have to strictly be always on the top note.

If you just want to learn to play songs written in chord melodies. Get an easy chord melody song book WITH TABS <--- very important. Maybe I'm still too beginner at guitars, but I just can't map multiple, harmonic notes on standard notation (staff notation) to the fretboard easily. Once you get the right hand being able to pick the target strings (multiple strings) accurately, you'll be playing chord melodies just fine.

[Big Band Guitar]

As simple as I can make it.

A slow process but it works.

Find the melody note on the first or second string.

Fill in 1 or more other notes in the chord.